Contributed by: Editor on Thursday, September 24 2009 @ 11:38 am
Last modified on
eHarmony in the United Kingdom launched in July 2008. It is just over a year later and they now have 400,000 members. For the first couple of months eHarmony was giving out free 90 day subscriptions to all new members (see Story), but beyond that they did not do a lot of marketing. According to Greg Waldorf, eHarmony's chief executive,
... last year's launch was deliberately "soft" so the company was not left in the awkward position of having lots of members of one sex signed-up without a sufficient number of the opposite sex to provide enough suitable matches.
For comparison, a competitor of eHarmony's in the United Kingdom, Match.com, has had 6.5 million singles signup as members since launch (a number of years ago).
Research by Mintel showed that last year the UK dating market grew by 20 percent to over £80m. This is good news for eHarmony, but they do have an uphill battle to attract new members. Their matching service is among the most expensive for an online dating site. For a 1 month membership, eHarmony UK costs £34.95, while Match.com and DatingDirect.com costs around £22. This means eHarmony subscription prices are about a third more. eHarmony is in the position that they must convince it's potential members that their technological advanced matching system is worth the increased price.
Waldorf also let it be known that beyond the 4 dating sites eHarmony already runs in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, that they are "actively looking" at several other countries to possible start another dating service. He also mentioned, eHarmony is exploring the idea of maybe starting specialized ethnic and religious dating sites.
For more details about dating in the United Kingdom, check out this Telegraph[*1] article. Visit our UK Dating Sites category for a complete list of dating sites serving the country and to find out more about eHarmony, read our review.